At school i took my iPad 2 to the it helpdesk (and my a-level computing teachers) to try and tackle the problem with connecting to the network. (Apologies if this post is in the wrong place).

So, the it help desk man put it on the password protected student network. From there we had to enter some proxy settings on "manual" according to some internet guides. We also entered the mac address of the iPad onto the network.

When loading up safari it said "internet page cannot be displayed" or something similar. SO after a while we attempted pinging the iPad which returned a ping... so its clearly there. After about 20 mins of messing around with it trying to get it to work we gave up for the time being.

So i went off to my computing teachers where they tried there. We went onto safari and went onto the intranet where one of the teachers was building a new version of the school Moodle so it can access that, however there is no internet access and the wifi icon that gets displayed at the top left of the screen next to where it says "iPad" isnt there - so no net connection.

I am on the latest iOS, 16gb wifi white iPad 2 if that helps at all? I dont know :S

At school i took my iPad 2 to the it helpdesk (and my a-level computing teachers) to try and tackle the problem with connecting to the network. (Apologies if this post is in the wrong place).

So, the it help desk man put it on the password protected student network. From there we had to enter some proxy settings on "manual" according to some internet guides. We also entered the mac address of the iPad onto the network.

When loading up safari it said "internet page cannot be displayed" or something similar. SO after a while we attempted pinging the iPad which returned a ping... so its clearly there. After about 20 mins of messing around with it trying to get it to work we gave up for the time being.

So i went off to my computing teachers where they tried there. We went onto safari and went onto the intranet where one of the teachers was building a new version of the school Moodle so it can access that, however there is no internet access and the wifi icon that gets displayed at the top left of the screen next to where it says "iPad" isnt there - so no net connection.

I am on the latest iOS, 16gb wifi white iPad 2 if that helps at all? I dont know :S

Look forward to tackling this thanks

Ian.

Click to expand...

OK - welcome to the Forum. I'm trying to understand a little more of the problem that you have. You've given a very comprehensive description of the steps that you have taken to try to solve this problem so that's very helpful. Setting up any computer/laptop/tablet computer with a private network that has a proxy server can be a time-consuming and frustrating affair so don't get discouraged - it's rarely 'plug and play'!

In your description of the steps you have taken there appears to be some contradictory information that I'm trying to understand - and it's probably my fault and I've misunderstood what you've said, so please forgive me.

So can I ask a few questions, if that's OK?

(1) You say that you can't see the WiFi signal 'fan' icon that appears on the top menu bar towards the left-hand edge of the screen. Have you ever seen that 'fan' icon there? The fan icon doesn't mean it's connected to the Internet; it just means it has a wireless connection to the WiFi access point.

(2) You say that you can 'ping' the iPad successfully, which seems contradictory to (1) because (1) is telling us that it's not connected by WiFi while your ability to ping it is suggesting that it is connected by WiFi.

(3) Have you been able to see anything on Safari at all - any intranet or any site or anything whatsoever?

I'm trying to establish whether the problem lies with your iPad connecting to the WiFi network - (1) says it isn't and (2) says it is. (3) would provide a definitive answer if you have ever seen anything. That would tell us the problem with not being able to connect to the Internet (notwithstanding the contradiction) is a proxy server problem.

Get back to us with some information and we'll try and help. Don't give up - it might take a while, but we'll get there in a while. We get thousands of posts a day on the Forum so, if I miss your reply, just PM me.

Thanks for the reply. Firstly thanks for the reassurance it can get quite frustrating when nothing works!!

The 'fan' sign next to the iPad thing is on now (on my home wifi network) and when I connect at other people's houses - but it wasn't in school.

Regarding the ping, this is where we were getting very confused. It is on the network but not Internet, it was pinging to my iPad without that fan symbol thing.

We opened safari, tried typing in google into the URL bar and it shot a error at us that it isn't connected; so we typed in a ip into the directory where they are building the new moodle (the intranet) but it wasn't a 192.168... Ip it was in the 172 range it could have been a dynamic ip (maybe that's not right terminology). So in short yes I could access the intranet.

One of my computing teachers suggested it's not matching the dns, but I haven't covered all that stuff yet in class so I may be incorrect in quoting if I don't understand.

I hope this helps in some way. thanks for the speedy response.

Ian.

Quick edit; in the wifi settings it shows it as connected as it has the tick in the selected network.

Hmmm, I am tethering off my phone right now but... Today in school it showed the fan, I could use mail, BBC iplayer, things that required the net except a browser. I tried google chrome and safari and none want to connect at all!!

Hmmm, I am tethering off my phone right now but... Today in school it showed the fan, I could use mail, BBC iplayer, things that required the net except a browser. I tried google chrome and safari and none want to connect at all!!

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ian.

Click to expand...

OK - this definitely sounds as though you don't have the proxy server for Safari (it would apply to the other browsers too) set up correctly. As I'm sure you're aware, the purpose (these days) of a proxy server is to prevent you visiting 'unsuitable' web sites from your school's network. Any request to visit a website that you make is forwarded to the proxy server and this has a black list of 'banned' sites or a 'white list' of allowed sites. The original purpose - back in the 'old days' of a proxy server was to 'cache' websites locally in order to avoid users at a site repeatedly requesting the same page. The idea was that, before we had such high-speed networks, this caching (local storage) of web pages would significantly speed access because the web page would only be retrieved from the local cache held by the proxy server, rather than being retrieved across the wider Internet.

But, with high-speed networks, this function is largely redundant and the primary purpose now is to monitor or restrict access. In some cases, companies simply don't want their employees surfing the net all day to non-business related websites.

Email - and other non-web-based access is often excluded from proxy filtering.

So your description makes it sound as though the proxy server address, passwords etc are somehow faulty. It would be worth checking carefully to ensure there's no mistake here. One 'tip' - if you have to enter a password for the proxy server, you need to remember that the iPad - by default - autocapitalises the first letter of the first word of what it perceives to be a new sentence. If your proxy password is lower case then check, when you enter it, that the iPad is not setting the first letter to upper case.

Good Luck and get back to us with further questions - or even news of success!!

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